Meta Platforms Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday talked up his company’s efforts to build the “metaverse,” an immersive virtual world he has billed as the Facebook parent’s future.
Doubts have swirled about whether the major metaverse investments will pay off for Meta, which changed its name from Facebook last year to highlight its shifting focus — although critics claim it was to distract from negative media reports.
Meanwhile, formidable rivals such as Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft Corp seem poised to compete with Meta on the new virtual terrain.
Photo: AFP
The metaverse is a 3D virtual world where people would be able to interact using sensors, head gear and other gadgets.
Meta’s early metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds, already allows people to socialize virtually while represented by avatars.
“The kinds of experiences you’ll have in the metaverse are beyond what’s possible today,” Zuckerberg said, as he opened a conference aiming to offer a glimpse inside Meta’s development labs.
“That’s going to require advances in a whole range of areas from hardware devices to software for building and exploring worlds,” he said.
Artificial intelligence is key to unlocking those advances, said Zuckerberg, who added that future platforms would need to be able to understand virtual worlds, and provide translation services for the many languages used in them.
Hit global video games such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, which run on traditional gaming platforms, are seen as precursors to the metaverse.
Rivals are not letting Meta’s claim to the metaverse go unchallenged.
Google, which stumbled early with augmented reality glasses, has a team of engineers, designers and scientists “building the foundations for great immersive computing,” an online job posting said.
Apple has bought start-ups specializing in the field, and is rumored to be working on its own mixed-reality headgear.
Microsoft, a video game industry powerhouse through its Xbox system and titles such as Minecraft, has made a US$69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard Inc, mentioning the metaverse as part of its motivation for the merger.
Meta’s stock price has plummeted since its most recent quarterly earnings showed growth slipping and its revenue taking a major hit due to Apple’s changes to its ad targeting rules.
On Wednesday, Meta shares fell to less than US$200 for the first time in nearly two years.
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